In our first mini episode of the Off the Record podcast, we speak to Devin Dawson all about coming back to the UK, touring with Dan + Shay and the story behind ‘Dark Horse.’
Have you had much of a chance to explore the UK – it’s not your first visit here?
No it’s like our fifth or sixth time around, but third time playing full on shows, let’s see… we had like a day or a half off in London so we got to go do some stuff. When we were in Glasgow, we got there a day early to acclimatise so that was nice.
Did you get to try the deep fried Mars bar?
No we haven’t yet, I’m usually pretty adventurous when it comes to food, I’m kind of a foodie, I went to culinary school for a little bit so I’m usually willing to try everything, but I’ve got to draw the line somewhere.
Does it feel very different every time you come back? Like this time you’re coming back with your buddies, Dan + Shay?
It’s like vacation almost, you know what I mean? I feel touring is in a way even though we’re always 24/7 on the job, but I think when you come with your friends I think that’s what makes it feel like a vacation.
A great atmosphere backstage?
Yeah there’s no kind of getting to know someone for the first couple of weeks, there’s no walking on eggshells – they’re very very welcoming.
Do you feel like you have to adapt your set a lot – last year you were touring with Tim and Faith in the US and now Dan + Shay in the UK, so do you change it up a lot for those?
Absolutely, I think it’s a little bit of both, you definitely need to qualify your audience, so that you’re putting your best foot forward that they’ve got to accept, but at the same time all these songs are me so they’re all going to be of me at the end of the day, but sometimes it’s nice to challenge people. I like the challenge for myself of having to win them over. But yeah we do tailor our set differently depending on the fans we’re opening up for and the places we’re in. I feel like we can get away with more heartbreak, emotional ballad-y songs here, where in the States we can but it’s a different style, especially since we’re opening acoustic, we have the chance to just really lean on lyrics and lean on musicality and lean on my voice and just tell people a story because they’re going to listen and that’s really special.
And it’s been a year now since Dark Horse was released, it must have been a whirlwind but also a long time coming?
Yeah you hit it, these songs, some of them have been written four or five years ago and that first album takes a little while to get out as an artist because you’re building the team and then you’re writing and recording and then you’re waiting, and then you get the single and then the single takes forever to get up the charts and then when it’s finally up the charts that’s when you release the album. I totally get it though – you’ve got to do it the right way – but at the same time I’m a guy who writes every single day so by the time the album had come out I’d already written 150 songs.
And then it’s how do you choose…? Had you always had a vision of how you wanted to announce yourself to the world?
Well that’s the thing, that’s the point of this album – to just introduce myself and I think I let it discover itself a lot, or let it discover me or whatever that means. I don’t know, I don’t think I necessarily had a vision other than just living and me, and just living and writing and finding the songs that fit well together that described who I was for the last three years. I’m not the guy that writes 12 songs and I’m like ‘I have an album.’ I will write and write and write until somebody says ‘OK we’re done, we need to make an album,’ and what are the best songs that are representative of the last three years of my life and what I’ve gone through and that’s what I will continue to do.
You had co-writes on every single track on the album, was that important that you were never going to have anything you hadn’t help create on there?
No I’m not above singing someone else’s song. If they can say it better than I can then I will totally be willing to record it if they will allow me. I think it just shaped out that way, it wasn’t something I needed to do, I didn’t say I need to write every song on this, that’s just what shook out and what happened. I think when you’re introducing yourself it’s important to start from your truth, even though there’s a lot of songs on the album I’m kind of narrating or putting myself in someone else’s shoes, which in a weird way says something about me too. But yeah it just shook out that way when all the gold was settled.
Are there certain people you turn to for certain songs and moods?
Yeah there’s certain titles or certain concepts that you might save or bring up to somebody because you know they’ll be good at it but I almost have this weird sort of performance anxiety when I get with people I love so much because I want to rise to the occasion. We have this huge group of best friends that all write in Nashville and I want them on my record so bad that I don’t allow myself to open up enough because I’m so anxious about getting it right. It’s weird. My creative muse inside me is so fickle, it’s so weird – I think everyone is that way in their own way.
Well you went from metal to country?
Right and it’s completely different writing with a band, and from that I went from writing in my room by myself and recently I’ve got back to that – I love the beauty of co-writing and it’s a really sacred thing in Nashville and I love it and it’s an art even of itself but writing by myself has been really liberating after having been on tour for a year and trying to find that inspiration. I feel like sometimes I’ve lost out on songs because I’ve brought them to somebody and just as much as I’ve lost out on songs I’ve also gained songs through co-writing as well so it’s an equal thing. But there’s certain titles that I’m learning I should probably just try to write by myself and it’s more rare for that song to see the light of day because when I write by myself I tend to go really introspective and I think if I shared it it would be too much. I think the songs that find that right balance are when you have someone else to bounce off of.
Almost by writing with someone else it becomes instantly relatable…
Yeah, well there’s that outside perspective of I totally get that or I didn’t see it that way… When I’m with guys we have this way of ‘oh that’s exactly what the girl wants to hear, she’ll like that’ and then I show it to my girlfriend and she’ll be like ‘oh we don’t like that…’ It’s nice to write with girls too because they understand what they want to hear and they have this different compassion for characters in the songs.
You released a live version recently, did you always know you wanted to release that stripped-back version? Obviously Jay Joyce did the production on the original album…
Right, it’s kind of messed up, because it’s almost bastardising all the work and money we put into that sonic identity of that album. It’s really just an inception of the song, it’s back to how it sounded when we wrote it. But the audio on the ‘Songs of the Key F’ album is just the audio from these video performances that we released around the time of Dark Horse, so if you go on my YouTube channel each song on my album has an interview and a performance in the room I wrote the song with the songwriters I wrote it with. I like to have layers to my songs and art so if people want to dig in they can. I think I run into the problem of doing too much and being too cryptic and too symbolic but I think the key is to do it in a way where it’s still acceptable to be surface level but if you want to dive in as a listener you can.
Going back to ‘All on Me’ did you have that feeling it would be as big as it was?
I think I had a feeling that it was the one to beat as far as first single goes and I think that was the first song I wrote for this album so it was almost this sonic flagship where I was like I like the sound of that, I like what I’m saying, I like the melodies, I like the groove and so you could argue that the album was kind of built around that. When I was writing it, I was writing every single day for two years seven days a week, so I knew we had wrote a good song but I didn’t know the breadth of and the amount of what it was until I had demo-ed it and heard it back and when I heard it back I knew that was the single and everyone else agreed.
What’s next in 2019, obviously your headline tour must be exciting to go back to?
Yeah we did half of it before the end of the year and it was really cool to headline. We’ve spent two years supporting other artists and I love supporting other artists because I learn so much and I’m still the new guy, I’m still introducing myself to so many people I’ve only scratched the surface of the world. It’s cool to have people come see you and get to play the whole album and we can dig in and stretch out. So we’re going back and kicking off the 2019 leg with Jillian Jacqueline and after that I’ll be doing some fairs and festivals in the summer but I think a lot of focus of this year will be writing and recording and focusing on what’s next.
For the full, unabridged interview listen to the podcast available here.
Visit Devin Dawson’s website here for more details.
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